Catalan public and subsidized healthcare doctors kept their word and took to the streets this Wednesday to reject the new Framework Statute and defend their own agreement which recognizes the particularities of doctors. This time the demonstration, led and led again by the majority union Metges de Catalunya, left in a column of around 800 people, according to the Urban Guard, from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Barcelona to conclude in front of the Health Department.
“Our goals are the defense of the profession and the defense of the quality of patient care, because until now they force us to treat patients, going beyond all limits, and we can no longer tolerate this. This fight is for us, but it is also for the patients,” declared the general secretary of Metges de Catalunya, Xavier Lleonart.
Behind a banner with the motto It affects you too, The demonstrators reiterated their discomfort with councilor Olga Pané and demanded that the department guarantee an improvement in their working conditions and “safe care” of patients. The union’s general secretary, Xavier Lléonart, warned this Tuesday during the first day of the shutdown that politicians “are only interested in the economic cost”. “We, doctors, solve more than 70% of the population’s health problems, and this will not change and cannot be replaced by Artificial Intelligence,” he added when reading the manifesto in the Plaza de Sant Jaume, in front of the Palau de la Generalitat.
The pressure on Minister Pané is increasing at a time when the Catalan health network is being put to the test by the advance of the flu, with a record incidence of 418 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Lleonart and the rest of the union condemn the Ministry of Health for “not wanting to talk to the organization”, even though it has the power to regulate doctors’ working hours or 24-hour shifts. “This department will not be able to turn a deaf ear forever because we will have enough loudspeakers for them to hear us,” he warned.
“If working conditions continue to be unworthy, young doctors will leave the public system because they do not want to suffer further overload of care,” Lleonart warned on Tuesday. Doctors across Spain are called this Wednesday to a second day of strike called by the Spanish Confederation of Medical Unions (CESM) and against the framework statute of the Ministry of Health.
In Catalonia, Metges de Catalunya supports the strike not only to demand its own framework status throughout Spain, but also to demand that the Ministry of Health establish its own negotiation space for doctors where working conditions, health and organizational aspects are discussed.
The Ministry of Health estimates the follow-up to the strike by doctors at SISCAT centers at 7.2%, a percentage slightly higher than that of Tuesday. By province, according to MC, the follow-up was 58% in Barcelona, 40% in Girona, 42% in Tarragona and 20% in Lleida. On the other hand, according to the union, 55% of doctors supported the strike, 10% more than the data provided by MC on Tuesday, which according to them was 45%. The organization also followed the strike in the rest of the provinces: 40% in Girona, 42% in Tarragona and 20% in Lleida. In terms of organization, follow-up to the strike was higher in primary care (57%) than in hospitals (29%), according to Metges de Catalunya.
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